


Walking Shadows

by Gryphonrhi



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Highlander: The Series, The X-Files
Genre: Advent Amnesty, Gen, I reserve the right to finish this, It's Krycek; who knows what he's up to., Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28037100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi
Summary: A rash of thefts shouldn't be something to draw in either Oz or Krycek.  Unless the thefts are being committed by a mage, or unless he's stolen some essential intel.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	Walking Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Guises](https://archiveofourown.org/works/66956) by [Gryphonrhi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi). 
  * Inspired by [And Sinister](https://archiveofourown.org/works/61541) by [Gryphonrhi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi). 



> Started for a Spook_Me fic years ago. Take warning appropriately, seeing as that's a horror fest.
> 
> Sequel to both Guises *and* And Sinister. I hadn't known those were in the same universe 'til now.

At 2:56 AM the intruder slid in through the jewelry store doorway surrounded by a swarm of wraiths.

They flocked around him in the light from the streetlights, passing back and forth through the store windows with a shimmering distortion reminiscent of people passing funhouse mirrors. The intruder in head-to-toe black looked almost too real in the midst of them.

Even more oddly, the intruder matched the wraiths' motions. The angle of insertion for a key followed the fading gesture of an older man; the key looked nowhere near as solid as his glove. The turn of hand and wrist mimicked the motions of a woman's arm that faded from sight almost as quickly as the door clicked open. The intruder strode across the store in the wake of a man in a three-piece suit, blocking an observer's view of the display cases as completely as the business man couldn’t.

He dodged the pressure sensors under the carpets as absently as the businessman had; he punched in the access code a bare step behind the businessman's hand. On the last stroke, his gloved finger went through the evaporating form without affecting either of them.

The shades spun through the store and its furnishings in erratic orbits and flickering, stuttering motions. Sometimes they completed gestures; sometimes they repeated actions like dancers in a piecemeal rehearsal. Regardless, their presence faded with their distance from their man in black or from a light source.

The intruder pulled open the safe with the same curve of arm as the much smaller blond ghost, reached unerringly for a single box which he shoved into pocket. As soon as it vanished, he flicked a commanding gesture at the ghosts or perhaps the lights. Both went out.

Oz watched the front and alley doors of Delarosa's Fine Jewelry until the shop owner found the store unlocked shortly before eight, then faded away himself before the police arrived. He left still wondering how the thief had gotten out and already deciding how to phrase a couple emails.

* * *

In the first three days of his hunt, Alex Krycek tracked the man in black through news articles that grew steadily more upset and more contemptuous of the police's abilities to catch the mysterious thief.

He'd stolen an unspecified piece of jewelry at Delarosa's -- in for cleaning, the jeweler said. The second night, an antiquarian bookstore reported the loss of several less-than-cheap books on topics ranging from lost cargo ships to biographies of pirates and politicians. New Moon New Age supply shop reported the theft of every semi-precious and precious gemstone they possessed, five boxes of beeswax candles, and their herbs were left scattered across the floor in a mess so thorough they couldn't say if anything had been taken beyond the mandrake roots which had been stolen in their entirety. The third night was a rash of break-ins at antiques stores that left doors unlocked, alarms deactivated, and nothing missing that the owners could be sure of.

The fourth night, Krycek found the thief by accident. 

He'd been prowling the streets after his attempt to steal the jeweled pendant he actually needed from Delarosa's. The rubies and diamonds would help finance some of his work, and the craftsmanship on the camera worked in behind the griffin would be worth studying. Mainly, however, Krycek had a few tricks in mind to retrieve the theoretically-deleted pictures off the memory card. 

All of that was going to have to wait until he could find and steal it back from a bastard who trailed other people's shadows after himself. He was turning over the stories of the thefts, trying to sort out a common denominator, when Krycek realized he was seeing stage lights from the _Dolphin_ theater. At 3 AM.

Krycek slipped in through the theater's side door, found the hallway to front of house, and worked his way up to the office, then into the upper boxes. He slipped along the side of the box, careful to blend with the shadows and the walls before he looked out into the theater.

The thief was there again, this time wearing dark grays and greens except for the mask covering his face. He was perched front row center, barely in the seat, arms almost folded on the edge of the stage, and he was watching the ghost of a play. The set, what there was of it, cast no shadows; neither did the actors. The stage dimmed here and there despite the bright lights overhead, as if even the light directions had left their impressions in the air.

Krycek watched Macbeth return from murdering his king without hearing a word of Macbeth's speeches or his wife's; he knew, nonetheless, precisely where they were in the play. His quarry's shoulders hunched forward, hands tight on the edge of the stage: he was completely absorbed by the play and Krycek suspected he _could_ hear every word.

The mage's attention on the play had allowed Krycek to get inside without notice; it also let Krycek work his way from the central box to the one on the far right and then back to the far left before returning to center. He came to two conclusions: the man wasn't wearing the pendant, and he almost certainly didn't have it on him. Krycek was watching the ghosts and their summoner, debating how much help the ghosts could or might give, and admiring Lady Macbeth's body language in the dagger speech when he sensed the new person in the building. 

Krycek looked quickly between the stage and the mage and realized his quarry didn't know about the new player in this game. The currents of air carried a bare eddy of night, and Krycek's fingers caught the faintest of vibrations carried through the floor joists up into the balcony rail.

Krycek faded into the shadows of the box's balcony and the chairs and listened for the intruder. He couldn't hear footsteps or doors opening until the door to his box cracked open and a dark figure came in sideways, closing the door noiselessly as soon as he'd cleared it, and dropping into the shadows on the other side of the box.

A barely-voiced whisper asked, "Alex?"

Krycek took a slow, deep breath and watched to see if the stage lights went out. When they didn't, he used the same murmur to answer, "Cory. Watch over the edge. Keep quiet. Talk later."

His twin inched upright almost in time with Alex's own ascent. The two of them stood, motionless, and watched the ghostly progress of the best version of _Macbeth_ Krycek had ever seen, not that he'd had time for many plays. That didn't matter. Ghost and shadow of old plays or not, it was superbly done and thoroughly engrossing. He split his attention between the play and its audience, sure that Cory was doing the same.

After the ghosts' final curtain call (in front of crimson velvet curtains that didn't block the view of an empty stage behind them, or of the wine velvet curtains tied off to either side), it was a full three minutes before the mage stood and stretched. His shoulders dropped with his arms, his chin fell to his chest for a moment, and then he straightened almost defiantly, body language shifting from tired to arrogant. He gestured the ghosts of the curtains and the lights out of existence with two flourishes of his hand, and the theater's silence gradually shifted to that of an empty building instead of a held breath.

Walls gave off the soft creaks of shifting temperatures. Hanging sets in the catwalks rustled and sighed as the air cooled without the stage lights. Krycek gave it a full ten minutes that felt like half an hour before he murmured near soundlessly, "Follow me out."

Cory's presence at his back was a comfortable, almost comforting, familiarity. And he was professional enough to be as soundless as Krycek, as handy with locks and memorizing layouts as he went. He stumbled into nothing, fell over nothing, disturbed nothing.

Cory did pause in a pool of light at a street intersection. "You don't see that every night."

"No," Krycek agreed grimly. "You don't."

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> If you know what the mage is up to, tell me? I think I know what Krycek's after, but when his is the easy part, well, that's why this isn't finished yet.


End file.
